


Figure Eight

by nuitdemesreves (mesohorany)



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Excessive swearing because Lucas is an angry hedgehog, Fix-It, Frottage, Guess that common room couch is good for something after all, Kind of PWP but it also serves a purpose, M/M, Post-Mardi 13:08, Sad!Eliott, Sad!Lucas, Smut, angry hookup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-11-07 02:38:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17952065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mesohorany/pseuds/nuitdemesreves
Summary: When Lucas is upset, he hides, but Eliott knows where to find him. AKA an excuse for me to write angry frottage. Post-Mardi 13:08.





	1. Chapter 1

Red is the color of rose and first sunrise and blood and it is the color of Lucas’s mood, permeating his vision as he surveys the unforgiving cafeteria. He is wan from sadness, sick of crying, and the throb of his fractured hand screams a heartbeat reminder: 

_you fucked up you fucked up you_

Behind him is Eliott but in front of him is a den of snakes and he can’t make a hasty exit once he decides to enter, he will be bitten, poisoned by words and whispers and _stares._ He folds in his lower lip to stop it trembling, glances down at his tray, makes the decision before he can question himself. With all that red red fury in every motion of his body he hurls his untouched food into the waste area and turns on his heel and _stomps_ away, shouldering accidentally into Eliott as he goes.

Eliott with his round expressive eyes, eyes that Lucas has seen tease and taunt and beckon. Eyes that ask about him, see through to him, _want_ him, except that has all been a lie, hasn’t it, because it isn’t Lucas that Eliott has been coming for lately. Lucas is so heartbroken he is _ill_ with it but he hasn’t yet sat long enough with his anger to recognize it as its true self: grief.

There is no one in the common room when he reaches it and he hurls himself down on the couch and folds into his sweatshirt, face smashed against his knees as he goes to inner war: _don’t cry at school_ but it’s much too late for that. The tears swell warm and heavy and fast, overflow down his cheeks, stain the fabric of his jeans but he doesn’t care. In the span of a week and a half he has found the greatest swoop-soaring joy and the cruelest pain he has ever known all in the face of one boy. He wants to walk out the doors of the school and go until he cannot, until he doesn’t have a name, until he can’t remember he is human. To be human is to feel, and his capacity for emotion has reduced to nothingness.

*

Eliott manages to eat three bites of his pasta before he stands up and dumps it in the trash, strides out of the cafeteria like he’s being sirened away. There is nowhere he can be right now that will settle his blood except with the one who has stirred it to turmoil. 

He goes to the place where Lucas is always waiting for him.

He is angry, and he is confused, and he is wrecked. He understands that Lucas hadn’t meant to hurt him, that there’s no way he could have known that his easy dismissal of “crazy people” would slash Elliot wide open, but how can he take his flip-flopping heart and give it to someone who is so careless with words? There is a reason that he has been with Lucille for so long: she is comfort, she is safe, she mothers him for his own good, and he knows what he gets with her. They have seen each other inside out; she is adept at reading his mood shifts, knows how to buffer him when he’s manic and bolster him when afterward he lies in bed dead-eyed and listless. There is nothing she can do that he cannot guess.

With Lucas, he can predict nothing. The intensity of the way he feels when Lucas looks at him is terrifying, but Eliott is drawn to him in a way that he has never been drawn to a single thing in his life, and he is made of want. Enough want to coax him to lower his guard.

Maybe it was a mistake, to let Lucas in (though if Eliott is honest with himself he can say that he has not let him in very far at all). But still he lies in his bed sleep-eyed and tormented at two am with Lucas’s face in his mind and the remnants of his lovely, lovely taste burning on his mouth and that is why he takes a breath and peeks his head over his wall and shoves his way through the common room doors.

Lucas is wrapped around himself on the couch, knees to chest with his face hidden, and immediately Eliott can tell that he is sobbing. He is sick from seeing it and for a second he just stands, stricken, unsure, until the door shuts behind him and Lucas’s head whips abruptly up. Even through tears his features are porcelain, unmatched, and Eliott takes one step back first from his beauty and then another from his rage. In Lucas’s eyes exhaustion and fury and _sorrow_ swim parallel to one another and his emotion is tangible.

“Jesus Christ, dude,” he spits out loud, and Eliott winces because there is that detested name again. “I told you to leave it.” 

“I know,” says Eliott, quiet. He is shaking. “I just - I can’t.”

Lucas laughs and it is cruel and joyless. 

“You can’t? _You_ can’t?” He wipes his eyes but there are still tears overflowing and Eliott can spot grief from galaxies away. “You’re the one who told me it was too fast. Or did you already forget that?" 

“I haven’t forgotten,” says Eliott, still low, unsure, but he is determined. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

“No?” Lucas’s hedgehog prickles are sharp as swordblades and even through the pain Eliott recognizes that his choice of representative animal could not be more correct. “That’s funny, because it looked to me like you were ready to forget I ever existed at that party on Friday night. Lucille took you back already, huh?”

Eliott’s mouth drains, desert.

“You saw us,” he says, and just like that everything makes so much sense.

“Yes I _saw you_ ,” says Lucas, and earlier he’d been afraid of serpents but now he is the one leaking venom. “You ask me to your house, you share your weed and your beer with me, you eye-fuck me on the dance floor, you take me to your secret place and kiss me in the rain and _spend the night_ with me and make me feel so fucking special, and then you tell me it’s _too fast?_ Are you kidding me, Eliott? This was _you_ , man. _You_ came after _me_. You can’t do all that stuff - you can’t make me fucking fall for you and then just - just drop me because you’re not sure. You seemed really fucking sure when you were on top of me in bed, so what the hell happened?”

Eliott knows his face is blood-dark and his belly is warm with shame but he stands his ground. Lucas isn’t innocent, but he doesn’t know it, and Eliott is aware that he has to be so, so careful here.

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Lucas.”

“Uh huh,” says Lucas dryly. He has stopped attempting to abate the flow of his tears and they are dripping endlessly across his cheeks, down the line of his nose. “Whose fault is that, Eliott? You tell me.”

Eliott looks away. 

“Sometimes things that seem simple on the surface,” he says carefully, “are really, really complicated.”

Lucas regards him blank-eyed and then he stands up and barges over to plant himself directly in front of Eliott so he can demand eye contact. The charge between them is volcanic.

“Explain, then.”

Eliott wants to, he wants to speak and free himself, but the sting of _I don’t need crazy people in my life_ is as fresh as it was when Lucas first said it and he is afraid.

“I can’t.”

Lucas is seething, virile. “Try.”

“I,” says Eliott, and then he bulls down into Lucas’s face and looks him in the eye and sets his mouth. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Lucas laughs again, runs both hands back through his hair, crazed. His eyes are so, so bright and Eliott is entranced by his fervor. “How do you fucking know? How? You tried so hard to - to _seduce_ me, and now you’re pushing me away because - what, things got too complicated? What happened between you coming after me with everything you had and you telling me you need more time? Because to me, there was nothing, and I won’t understand unless you tell me, because right now I haven’t got a fucking _clue_.”

Eliott swallows, shuts his eyes. He knows Lucas is right. 

“I know you don’t,” he says, and his voice glitches. “I know you don’t, because to you it _was_ nothing.”

Lucas’s eyes are glass. “What? What was nothing?”

Eliott’s mouth feels thick, dry, he can’t use his words properly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t you fucking dare,” says Lucas, and his voice is the kind of quiet that suggests violence, “say that to me. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I feel like crying all the time. So don’t try to stand there and tell me that whatever it is that’s keeping me from the person who has made me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt in my life _doesn’t matter_.”

Inside Eliott’s chest pools a warm golden glow. He takes a deep breath.

“I made you feel that way?” 

Lucas is crying again, but this time it’s from frustration. How can Eliott not know what he is doing to him? 

“Eliott, _yes,_ ” he says, and Eliott loves it when he speaks his name, tongues it like sweet cream, pure as summer dawn. “You don’t- all I fucking _think about_ is you. I’ve never felt like this, not ever. I want to talk to you all the time, I want to know what you’re thinking, I...I’ve had fucking blue balls since you sat next to me at the bus stop that first time...” 

The blood that is so concentrated in Eliott’s face rushes abruptly downward. When he speaks his voice is hot. 

“Really.”

Lucas sniffs, chuckles a little, and this time it’s genuine.

“You aren’t that oblivious.”

Their eyes meet, click like a lock. Eliott’s gaze drops to Lucas’s mouth. He’s frustrated and Lucas is angry and the air around them is only fire but his body recognizes who it is that is standing before him and he can’t war with what it wants.

“You’re right,” he says, “I’m not. The bus station, huh.”

“Yeah,” mutters Lucas, cutting his eyes away, “or maybe before, I don’t know. You’re really - you fuck me up, man.”

They are toe to toe, so close Eliott can feel the heat of Lucas’s core. He bends down so Lucas is forced by reflex to look back at him.

“ _Man_ ,” he spits, “I hate this _man_. Say my name.”

Lucas arches one thick eyebrow. He can’t understand how he can go from well-deep melancholy to crimson wrath to _ferocious_ arousal in such a short period of time but if anyone can shuffle his emotions like a deck of cards it’s Eliott. He raises his chin in defiance.

“Make me.”

Eliott is thrilled down his spine.

“What are you asking?”

“I’m not asking,” says Lucas, and then Eliott seizes Lucas’s face in his hands and crushes their lips together, kissing him like he’s starved for it, and he is. Lucas isn’t the only one who’s had a constant hard-on for weeks and that gorgeous, blissful, tentative day spent in bed was as unfulfilling as it was incredible because they were both painfully shy, hard against each other but nervous, and neither of them had been courageous enough to make that first move. Eliott has been aching with want on a low level since that day and the second Lucas kisses him back he groans out loud.

Lucas licks between Eliott’s pretty lips and gets a hand fisted in his floppy hair and just like that Eliott bends down, grabs Lucas around the hips, picks him up bodily and walks him back against the side wall. Lucas squirms but he is electrified for it, lets Eliott position him as he wants, spine to the wall and hands pinned on either side of his head as Eliott tastes every crevice of his mouth. Their hips are flush and Eliott is so hard and Lucas is keening because he feels _so so good_ and he hates this because he’s confused as fuck but he _loves this_ because Eliott has a knee up between his thighs and Lucas knows what he is asking for. Deliberately he grinds down into Eliott’s leg and they both moan aloud.

Eliott draws back, looks into Lucas’s eyes with that stare so dripping with sex, and Lucas shakes his head as he rubs himself wantonly against Eliott’s thigh.

“Do you even _know_ ,” he grits out, and then he can’t finish because Eliott’s tongue is in his ear and suddenly words are impossible.

“Know what.”

“How fucking hot I get for you when you look at me like that,” says Lucas, and when Eliott grins it’s so genuine and sweet and the contrast is _stunning_.

“How can I not? You’re the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen,” says Eliott, low, and then he grabs Lucas’s hips and forces him down and Lucas begins to ride his thigh in earnest. Eliott lets Lucas work out that killing rhythm and when Lucas is eyes-fluttering and moaning and _gone_ he gets one hand between them and rubs his own iron cock through his jeans, gasping for the contact, wanton.

“Anyone could walk in,” hisses Lucas through his haze, and Eliott’s responsive grin is vulpine.

“You don’t like danger?”

“I like it if it involves you,” says Lucas, and then Eliott launches forward and gets their hips flush again and Lucas is so close it’s _embarrassing_.

“Couch,” says Eliott, and Lucas lets himself be guided, lets Eliott shove him down and climb him, match pelvis to pelvis and _grind._ Lucas reaches between them and unzips his jeans, fumbles at Eliott’s button with a query in his eyes, and Eliott growls and tears at his zipper and then there is nothing between them but the thin diaphanous material of boxers. When Eliott shifts his hips, bucks down, Lucas moans aloud because Eliott’s cock is huge and hot and he wants to feel _everything_.

Eliott says,

“Yes?”

And Lucas groans,

“ _Fuck yes_ ,” 

So Eliott rubs slow and merciless against him until they are both quivering, messy sighing into each other’s mouths, and when Lucas comes it’s with one hand braided through Eliott’s hair and the other clamped ferociously around his hip. Eliott’s name in his mouth is an incantation and the sound of it drives Eliott to shivery orgasm, waves and waves of it with Lucas’s tongue racing down his throat, white-hot at his core.

The aftermath is sticky and giggly and when Eliott kisses Lucas gentle on the mouth he feels his heart lurch with emotion.

“Maybe you’ll be able to sleep tonight, yeah?”

Lucas laughs through his nose. “Maybe. Depends.”

Eliott knows what he means. “Can you, um - can you skip class right now?” 

“I shouldn’t,” says Lucas, like he’d ever say anything but yes, like he wouldn’t follow Eliott to the moon if he asked. “But I will if it means I get to be with you.”

Eliott leans down, kisses him on the nose, the lips, presses his forehead to Lucas’s own. He can’t believe no one has discovered them but he’s willing to push their luck as long as Lucas is. 

“You do,” he says, softly. “All day, all night, if you want. If you come to mine I’ll make sure you sleep.”

Lucas’s eyebrows bridge of their own accord and he’s fresh from his orgasm but there is heat behind Eliott’s words and he’s already squirming again. “I’ll take you up on that.”

Eliott smiles, that huge magnificent thing that crinkles his eyes and transforms his flawless face into a ray of light. “Good. Let me take you for coffee. We’ll go for a walk.”

He starts to sit up, work at the zipper of his jeans, but Lucas yanks him roughly back and kisses him hard on the mouth. Eliott squeaks with pleasure. 

“Eliott,” says Lucas, husk in his voice. “Whatever it is...”

Eliott watches him, strokes the side of his angular face. He has no idea how to explain, how to tell Lucas that he is bipolar, but he has to try. He wants this, wants a future here, and if it exists he cannot keep Lucas in the dark. Not when he’s so afraid of it.

“Whatever it is,” continues Lucas, “it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing...nothing that could make me not want to be with you.”

Eliott lowers his eyes; his heart is thumping like a jackhammer. “Don’t say that. Not until you know.”

Lucas resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You’re impossible, you know that? I’m only going to repeat myself after you tell me whatever it is.”

Surprised, Eliott laughs out loud. “Lucas...”

“Eliott, shut up,” says Lucas. “Stop second guessing yourself. I don’t let just anyone grind me into the common room couch, you know. If that doesn’t tell you I’m serious, you’re shit out of luck.”

Eliott hooks his teeth over his bottom lip, hunts in Lucas’s eyes and finds only honesty there. The sight solidifies his decision. 

“Okay.”

So they go with a stop in the bathroom to clean up hastily before they ditch class, free as wind. Eliott takes Lucas to his favorite little hidden-gem coffee shop, a place he goes to hide and draw and search for himself when he’s reeling from the backlash of another episode. With confidence Lucas orders a shot in the dark and Eliott watches him smiling and under his gaze Lucas flushes.

“What?”

“Nothing,” says Eliott, before he orders the same. He’s been drinking coffee blacker than the bottom of the Mariana Trench since he was fourteen.

Outside in the gray wind of the day they stroll together, sipping at their scalding drinks in intimate silence, and after a moment Eliott feels Lucas’s fingers slipping cautiously inside of his own. There are people everywhere and Eliott has long since recognized Lucas’s fear of public affection and the look in his eyes when he glances sideways at Eliott is liquid, apprehensive, bashful. Eliott beams for him and squeezes his hand as tightly as he can, brings it to his mouth so he can kiss Lucas’s fingers. He is shaking again, all nerves, because what if Lucas runs from him when he discovers the truth?

“Take your time,” says Lucas quietly, interpreting him with ease. “I’m not going anywhere.”

So Eliott folds his lips together and blows out a breath and shuts his eyes briefly before he swallows the rust in his voice and speaks.

“I have to tell you something.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all didn't think I could really end this after just one, right? ;)
> 
> I had most of this typed up after posting chapter 1 but then the rest of the season happened and I just had to kind of separate my thoughts out and wrap my head around it before I could get back to this. I hope y'all enjoy my slightly different version of canon. I love every single one of my readers and I would like to thank you all for your lovely feedback and kind words :) hope you enjoy!

Lucas hears the fear in Eliott’s voice, senses the hesitation, the slight tremor in the cadence of his tone. He is not steady right now, not at all; gone is the confidence that soared from him like an aura when he sought Lucas’s eye in the shattering almost-light of that forbidden late-night party, when he said  _you’re the first one._ Now he is stripped; now he is debased, and Lucas understands that he has never been more fragile.

 

“Tell me,” he says, and looks away to allow Eliott to collect himself. The coffee when he sips at it is so hot it stings his tongue but he perseveres because by now he is used to hurting  _everywhere_  and after all what is physical pain when you’ve experienced heartsigh after heartsigh?

 

Eliott keeps his step slow, that languorous movement that enraptures Lucas, deliberate forward motion. He looks out in front of him, to the side, to the sky, anywhere but at Lucas’s face.

 

“So,” he says, careful. “You know how I wanted you to skip class with me the other day?”

 

Briefly Lucas grits his teeth against the shards of agony that streak through his chest, in his mind’s clear eye seeing Eliott’s face as he retreated from him, so abruptly veiled with no explanation. “Yeah.”

 

“Yeah, so,” says Eliott, low; they are walking so near to each other that Lucas can feel the warmth of him. “Um, you probably noticed that I...got weird, at the end.”

 

“I did,” says Lucas quietly. His chest feels as though it might burst; Eliott is wrecking him right now and he doesn’t even know it. All Lucas has done lately is wait for an explanation and now that it’s arrived he doesn’t know how to handle it, doesn’t know how to even speak. He wants to say more but he can’t and besides this is Eliott’s time to kneel at confession.

 

“I’m sorry for that,” says Eliott quietly. “But...there’s something you need to know. You, um, you said about your mom. You don’t talk to her anymore, because she’s crazy.”

 

Lucas’s mind is stalling; he has no idea where this winding pathway of a conversation could possibly be leading, but he constantly fears the appearance of a cliffedge. “Yeah. Well, I mean, no. I still talk to her, just like...I don’t tell her much. She is - very complicated.”

 

“Yeah, um,” says Eliott, his voice rising in pitch. “I kind of understand that, because mental illness in itself is very complicated, and, Lucas.”

 

He stops, swivels so they are facing each other, and Lucas can tell that the eye contact he establishes between them is very, very difficult for him to maintain, he’s always looking to the side, downward when he’s nervous for his own thoughts. He opens his beautiful mouth, tries to speak, swallows it down.

 

“Eliott,” says Lucas gently, “it’s all right. Tell me.”

 

Eliott wets his lips with his tongue, gives a small smile wholly devoid of joy, shrugs his broad shoulders. Not for the first time Lucas is struck by how small he has made himself.

 

“I have one.”

 

Lucas’s mind wipes, clean slate.

 

“Have one - what?”

 

“A mental illness,” says Eliott, and Lucas suddenly realizes that he is shaking so hard he is  _vibrating_. He is terrified, and it is terrifying. “Lucas, I’m bipolar.”

 

Wrongfooted, Lucas stares at him, and just like that he understands. Understands why Eliott ran, why he went back to his comfort source, why he  _needed some time_. It wasn’t because he had suddenly changed his mind about Lucas, or led him on, or felt that things between them were escalating too quickly. He ran because Lucas said  _I don’t need crazy people in my life_  and in his head that translated to  _you don’t need me._

Lucas’s face crumples; he sobs out an exhale, one that’s been holding all the sorrow and uncertainty and anxiety and  _agony_ of the past week, and covers his face with his bandaged hand.

 

“You’re bipolar.”

 

“Yes,” says Eliott, and his voice is tiny. “I am.”

 

“You’re bipolar,” repeats Lucas, furious with himself, “and I told you I didn’t need crazy people around me.”

“Yes,” says Eliott. “I - it hurt me, Lucas. A lot. I didn’t know what to say, so I walked away. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you have to understand - when you said that, I instantly felt like you didn’t want me.”

 

Tears like liquid gemstones swarm unbidden to Lucas’s eyes. He seizes Eliott’s arm and pulls him away from the middle of the sidewalk, into a deserted café alleyway removed from the busy midday action of the street.

 

“You thought I didn’t want you?”

 

“Yes,” says Eliott helplessly, “I - ”

 

Lucas  _pounces_ forward, kisses Eliott so fiercely on the mouth he thieves his unsteady breath, free hand buried in the folds of Eliott’s jacket.

 

“Eliott, I’m an idiot,” says Lucas fiercely, against his lips. “An idiot. That was the most insensitive fucking thing I’ve ever said and I should never have said it. I have so much to learn, I - there’s so much wrong with me that I can barely admit to myself that I’m gay. I - Eliott, I am so, so sorry.”

 

Eliott frames Lucas’s face in his hands and nuzzles his forehead and when they kiss Lucas becomes aware that Eliott’s cheeks are wet with his own tears.

 

“It’s okay, Lucas,” he says, and his voice is all relief, thick with heavy emotion. “It’s okay. You didn’t know, and I know you didn’t mean it.”

 

“I don’t care,” says Lucas, vehement. “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know, there’s no excuse for me to say shit like that. I’m - I’m a mess, Eliott.”

 

Eliott laughs and Lucas’s heart is bird wings and euphoria. “Hey, me too. But you’re my mess. I mean, if you want to be.” Shy.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” says Lucas fiercely, and Eliott shoves him back against the solid brick wall, kisses him like he’s everything in the world he’s ever wanted.

 

“You’re sure,” he says when he draws back, and he is so uncertain Lucas’s heart fractures, one more crack in its marred exterior. Eliott is saying  _you can walk away_ , he is saying  _here’s your opportunity_. He is so quick to believe he’s unlovable.

 

“Sure?” Lucas kisses Eliott’s nose, his cheeks, the salt of his tears like brine on his lips. “Of you? Eliott, you’re all I think about. I want to be with you every second of every day, awake or asleep, I fucking dream about you. I look for you everywhere and I want to talk to you constantly and tell you everything and hear you talk about anything at all because I care about you so fucking much and I think you’re  _so_ interesting. The instant I saw you, I was yours. I told you nothing could change my mind, and I meant it. I don’t give a fuck if you’re bipolar, as long as you’re mine.”

 

Eliott’s lovely mercurial eyes are glassed-over with tears.

 

“Yours,” he breathes, and then Lucas leans down to perch his coffee at his feet and kisses him, so hard they’re both half-blind from it, woozy and needy and  _staggered_. It’s necessary and perfect and breath-stealing and their hearts are sprinting in synchronicity and Lucas swears he can feel Eliott’s chest swelling. He knows he is in love but he is afraid to say it and all he wants to do is stay here, here in this gloomy alleyway with Eliott’s hand braided in his hair and his breath pouring like wine into Lucas’s mouth. Paradise.

 

They stay in their secluded corner of the world for an unnameable time, fully engrossed in each other, and when Eliott finally pulls away he is no longer crying.

 

“Our coffee will get cold,” he says bashfully, and Lucas grins.

 

“We can get coffee whenever. This is way more important.”

 

“You’re right,” says Eliott, and he nudges his forehead gently against Lucas’s own. “Oh, Lucas. My sad little hedgehog. I have needed to speak to you for so long, but I didn’t know how.”

 

Lucas shuts his eyes; he feels like Peter Pan, off to Neverland, soaring. “I’ve needed to speak to you, too. I’ve been going crazy not knowing what’s in your head.”

 

“I know,” says Eliott, all regret. “I wanted to tell you, but I thought you’d hate me.”

 

“Hate you?” Lucas isn’t even thinking when he opens his mouth. “Eliott, I’m in love with you.”

 

Eliott looks at him, shocked.

 

“You - love me?”

 

Lucas hadn’t meant to say it; he is more afraid than he’s ever been but there is no going back now because it’s the truth and he’s known it for days.

 

“I do.”

 

Elliott’s smile is constellation-bright, illumination like the Aurora, pure joy.

 

“I’m in love with you, too.”

 

Lucas shuts his eyes and grins and everything feels like it’s brand new and he can’t even remember how to feel sad. The past week has been a hazy night terror but now he is awake, awake, awake.

 

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that.”

 

“Oh yes I do,” says Eliott, and then he kisses him, light as rain, sweet and soft, all meaning. When he pulls back he says, because he can flip that switch from shy to cocksure as hastily as he needs, “Can I take you home tonight?”

 

Lucas looks into Eliott’s stormcloud eyes and reads within his gaze everything he needs to know.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Do you want to maybe go to my place now?”

 

“Yes,” says Lucas firmly, and so saying, they collect their coffee cups and take off, hand in hand, blood roaring with euphoria. As they go Lucas swings their arms carefree between them and grins off into the distance and Eliott looks over at him and beams.

 

“You’re so beautiful when you’re happy.”

 

“You’re so beautiful all the time,” says Lucas, and Eliott flushes. “Seriously. When I saw you in the common room, I forgot how to be normal.”

 

“Ah, so my seduction technique worked, then,” says Eliott with not a little smugness. Lucas laughs in disbelief.

 

“You weren’t fucking around, were you?”

 

“Nope,” says Eliott. His voice is all cheer. “I wanted you to know you had my attention.”

 

“That was clear,” says Lucas, and he smiles, shakes his fluffy head. “I couldn’t stop looking at you.”

 

“I know,” says Eliott fondly. “I couldn’t stop looking at you, either. I told you, you’re all I saw.”

 

It’s Lucas’s turn to blush, pretty as a flowerpetal. “No one has ever made me feel the way I feel when you look at me.”

 

“How’s that?”

 

“Like I’m worth something,” says Lucas. “Like I’m interesting.”

 

“You’re worth everything,” says Eliott on a growl, and his fingers tighten in Lucas’s own. “I’m sorry that I’ve made you feel otherwise.”

 

Lucas shrugs his shoulders, smiles. “Our communication skills require some work.”

 

“They do,” agrees Eliott. “So for the sake of being transparent, we’ll start with this. Do you know what it means, that I’m bipolar? Do you understand the gravity of that?”

 

His eyes when he looks sideways at Lucas are grave. The wind tugs and tousles at his ruckus hair and Lucas is drymouthed for him.

 

“I think so,” he says, slow. “It means you have intense mood swings, right? Like, you’re really happy and on top of the world sometimes, and others you’re really down?”

 

“Essentially, yes,” says Eliott. He glances away, pensive all over his face, and thinks before he speaks again. “Manic-depressive, it’s called. When I’m manic, it’s like I have delusions of grandeur - I’ll stay up for two or three days, clean obsessively, plan ridiculous things, be reckless with myself and my health and my decisions. When I come out of that, immediately after, I can sleep for hours, days, even, and not want to get out of bed. I’ll be sad and hopeless and hard to be around. It can be quite exhausting. And my mood can change so fast it’ll make you dizzy.”

 

“That’s already happened. It happened when you walked into that common room. And when you caught my eye while you were making out with Lucille,” says Lucas, grinning. “I turned my head so quickly I thought I broke my neck.”

 

Eliott laughs out loud, a genuine, sharp thing that cuts the breeze in two. “Oh, good, you have practice then.”

 

“I’m a trained professional,” says Lucas, easy. “Hit me with your best shot.”

 

Eliott looks down, smiles, but his eyes when he looks up are melancholy.

 

“You don’t mean that. You don’t know what it’s like.”

 

“I don’t care,” says Lucas. “I don’t. I want to be with you, whatever that means. Show me how to take care of you. We’ll get through it.”

 

And the look in his eyes is enough to convince Eliott that he’s not lying.

 

*

They take the bus to Eliott’s place, sit close together in the very back, holding hands and watching each other with that ingrained fear of loss, wary. Their entire relationship has felt like missed trains and seconds too late and it’s strange that now they might have a chance to change that.

 

“Are you afraid?” Eliott asks Lucas as he nurses Lucas’s injured hand in his lap, tender. He always asks the difficult questions, won’t let Lucas shy away.

 

Lucas looks at him, back and forth between his beautiful eyes, and nods.

 

“Are you?”

 

“Yeah,” says Eliott, softly. “Because I haven’t felt anything like this in my life.”

 

Lucas smiles and lets his gaze fall to settle on his lap.

 

“I haven’t, either.”

 

When they get to Eliott’s it’s dark and dim inside and Lucas realizes the second they cross the threshold that he expected it: he knows nothing of Eliott’s family, friends, personal life other than the snapshots he’s been shown. If someone had been home he’d have been shocked because all he knows of Eliott’s inner circle is Lucille and fuck if he ever wants to see her again.

 

Eliott kicks his shoes off, throws his bag down, stands in the foyer with his big hands shoved in his pockets smiling at Lucas. The air feels magnetic, hackle-raising.

 

“Do you want anything? Water, food?”

 

“Later,” says Lucas, and he takes Eliott by the lapels and slams him back against the wall, kisses him so deeply Eliott goes boneless for it, white-flag surrender as they fuse again at last. Eliott has been so terrified to lose this that it feels a thousand times better than it did even earlier that day, when his body was needy and starving but his mind still feared Lucas’s reaction to his secret. Now he knows, now he can be secure. Lucas wants this as much as he does and in his life he has much of which to be uncertain but no longer does he question Lucas’s loyalty. He leans forward into him, fingers sliding up through the sides of his spiky hair, and sighs slow. Lucas can taste the need on his breath.

 

For a moment they stay against the wall, Elliott’s spine pasted back to it, Lucas’s knee warm and firm between his thighs, mimic. He has no idea what to do, no inkling of how to be with a man beyond basic knowledge, but he can follow Eliott’s lead and he remembers all too well how good, good, good it felt to rub himself against Eliott’s leg so he figures it can’t hurt to repay the favor. When Eliott shifts his hips downward, seeking that killing friction, he tilts his head back and gives this low warbling cry and Lucas, delighted, knows he is on the right track. He hides his face in Eliott’s throat and his lips are phantom fairy wings ghosting over his skin and the hair on the back of a Eliott’s neck stands up for it, shivery.

 

“Lucas...”

 

Lucas shoves his forehead against Eliott’s,

breathes him.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Eliott grabs Lucas’s face in his hands, forces him to look. There is craze in his eyes from want and Lucas can feel how fast blood surges to his cock, downward arrow strike.

 

“Bedroom.”

 

Who is Lucas to argue? Once again he lets Eliott lead, dragged along willingly by the hand down the hallway, every few steps intercepting the kiss Eliott turns back to give him. Their progress is slow but it is sure and when they reach their destination Eliott slams the door behind them, bolts it.

 

“Just in case,” he says, and gives that charming smile, blinding-gorgeous. Lucas smiles back but just as he is mustering a reply Eliott is on him again, walking him back to the mattress, throwing him down as he shrugs frantically out of his jacket, shirtless before Lucas can blink. His skin is luminescent in the afternoon glow of sun reaching through the windows and Lucas wants to bite his tattoos, mark him  _taken_.

 

“Fuck, Eliott.”

 

“Mmm.” Eliott falls on his knees on the bed before him, the palm of his hand flat over Lucas’s heart under the zipper of his hoodie. “Off. Let me see you.”

 

So Lucas scrambles to liberate himself from all that cloth. When he is bare from the waist up Eliott slinks to him like a wildcat and presses his mouth to Lucas’s torso, trail of kisses all the way up to his lips, and their combined flavor is adrenaline and want. Lucas commits it to memory. Nothing he has ever tasted has been so lush.

 

Eliott straddles him, one lissome thigh on either side of his hips, and Lucas groans for the contact. They writhe together, sinuous serpentine rhythm already established from their short sweet time on the common room couch, and it is lovely but it is not enough because Lucas wants  _more_ , wants  _all_. He reaches between them and runs his fingertips down Eliott’s chest, hooks them in the waistband of his boxers, thin stripe peeking up over his jeans. Looks up, biting his lip, into Eliott’s hooded eyes.

 

Eliott feels it like a dare. He threads his fingers through Lucas’s own and guides him, unbuttoning and unzipping until he can wriggle out, out, out. Lucas watches him starving, watches him scared, watches him desperate, and Eliott reads his eyes and leans down to kiss the fear away.

 

“Tell me what you need.”

 

“I need - “ Lucas is frustrated, scrabbling for words that won’t come. “I don’t - I want  _you_ , but I don’t know how to - “

 

“Hush,” says Eliott, smiling that billion-dollar smile, shiny as a star, forehead smack against Lucas’s own. “I’ll take care of you.”

 

“I want to take care of  _you -_ “

 

“You do,” says Eliott, tender. He nudges urgently into Lucas’s throat before he reaches between them and gets his thumbs hooked in the beltloops of Lucas’s jeans and then Lucas is wrestling with them to get them down over his hips, his knees. Eliott finishes the job by yanking them over his ankles, proceeds to match their hips again (once, twice, so Lucas’s mouth opens in automatic pleasure) before he gets up on his haunches. Lucas watches him, watches the way his cock twitches rhythmically against the front flap of his boxers.

 

“Can I take these off,” he says, voice ragged, pawing at the waistband, and in answer Eliott smiles and does it for him.

 

“And yours?”

 

“Yes,” gasps Lucas, mesmerized by Eliott’s beautiful body, the ridges of his hips, how hard and ready for him he is. As he slides his own boxers down over his hips, freeing himself, the air cool and quivery on his fevered skin, he doesn’t or maybe  _can’t_ take his eyes away. When they are both naked it’s like the pressure has been released from the air.

 

Lucas reaches out to touch, hesitates, and Eliott runs his fingers over the back of Lucas’s hand, robin’s-egg veins on his pale wrist.

 

“I want you to,” he says softly, eyes locked to Lucas’s own, so with a surge of courage Lucas extends his hand and runs a cautious thumb over the swollen crown of Eliott’s cock.

 

They both hiss for the touch, ruined; Eliott wants to thrust forward but he lets Lucas go at his own pace because ( _am I your first guy?_ ) he is learning, and he should learn how he likes. He tempers his breathing, sucks it back through his nose as his chest shakes with the Herculean effort to control, and Lucas watches him like he is some type of majesty.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing,” says Eliott, apology in his blacked-out eyes, “I’ve just wanted this for so long.”

 

Lucas thumbs over Eliott’s slit and his mouth falls open in that slight sly smile because he can feel Eliott trembling, how much he craves the friction. He knows what Eliott means: frantic grinding through boxers in the school common room is perfect in a desperate, necessary way, but this - this is something else entirely.

 

“Me too.”

 

Eliott reaches down to pull Lucas up and Lucas glides up to his knees, graceful for maybe the first time that day, and as they kiss slow Eliott crooks his wrist around Lucas’s neck and maneuvers himself gently closer so they are front-to-front. When their cocks come slick and hot together Lucas gives a shuddering gasp that breaks in half before it manages to escape his throat and Eliott yanks him closer, the palm of his free hand clasped diagonally at the junction of Lucas’s lower back and hipbone, steadying him. Lucas swallows, wraps his hands around Eliott’s

arms so he can anchor himself. When he bucks gently forward Eliott shuts his eyes and  _moves_.

 

They are good at this now, not quite so clumsy and searching as before, and without the annoyance of boxers in the way it’s an entirely different sensation. Fever skin, damp with sweat and precum, the heat between them an inferno as Eliott’s fingertips trace galaxies down Lucas’s back. It feels  _so good_  and Lucas’s nerve endings are  _alive_  and the way they move together is harmonic, swells and crescendos within Lucas’s bloodstream, unmatched. He tracks a hand up to twine in Eliott’s thick mess of hair, buries his face in Eliott’s throat, whimpers aloud. Voice muffled against skin he chokes out,

 

“Eliott, please.”

 

Eliott’s stomach drops for the need in his voice.

 

“Tell me what you want, Lu.”

 

Lucas doesn’t know, only knows that he wants Eliott to come all over him, paint him in white and cream and milk. He smiles into the canyon between Eliott’s throat and shoulder, shy again, and shakes his head.

 

“You. Show me.”

 

Eliott draws back so he can kiss him, licks once under his top lip, then his lower, before he slips his tongue into Lucas’s mouth. He tastes like  _ready_  and when Eliott reaches down to wrap a hand around Lucas’s cock and bring it against his own, both of them clutched gently together in his fist, the look on Lucas’s face is all bliss. Brows furrowed, eyes closed, kiss-fat lips parted as he hisses in breath.

 

“I have all night to show you,” says Eliott, and he smiles before he begins to jerk them together, slow,  _slow_ so Lucas’s face goes hot with it. Both of them are pouring precum and he is careful to spread it everywhere before he increases his pace, shuddering for the feel of Lucas against him, how swollen and throbbing his flesh. Want radiates from him like heat from sun and Eliott wants to give him everything, whatever he needs. When he kisses his open mouth Lucas sighs aloud and one hand goes to lodge back within Eliott’s hair, the other sliding down to wrap around where Eliott’s fingers secure their cocks together.

 

“I want to feel how you do it,” he says on a whisper, so Eliott lets him. Both of them gasping together, shivering, lips meeting first gentle and sweet and slow before their need for each other crashes down around them and the kiss becomes shot through with resultant flames. Eliott pours gasps like sweet red wine down Lucas’s throat and Lucas drinks him eagerly, intoxicated, in love, threshholding on his orgasm as he lets Eliott lead their pace. He is about to cry out a warning when Eliott chokes,

 

“Lucas, I’m  _close_ ,”

 

And there it is. Lucas gets his wish, Eliott writhing and groaning as he spurts thick milky fluid over the tautness of Lucas’s lower abdomen, Lucas’s vision going alternately dark and light at the peripherals as he reaches climax, too. They are a mess of perspiration and breath that runs so fast it can’t be caught and when Eliott clamps his dry hand around the tender nape of Lucas’s neck and whispers, “I love you,” into his skin Lucas can feel his voice swimming warmly down his bloodstream and lodging in his heart.

 

Afterward they lie together, lazy stroking each other’s faces, discovering dreams. They are in no hurry. Eliott had said  _all night_ but what he had really meant was  _all life_.

 

**Author's Note:**

> It's totally unrealistic that they didn't even come close to getting caught but I ain't even mad, I'm trying to make them as HAPPY AS POSSIBLE right now because this season has got me wrecked. I left this ambiguous because I KIND of want to continue it, but I want to know how the show itself will handle things before I go too far with my own headcanon. At any rate I could definitely write more pointless porn because it makes me feel better and those boys are so thirsty for each other + I am thirsty for them + we all need a relief from all this angst. GAH. Let me know if you guys want more and I'll see what I can do ;) Hope you enjoy.
> 
> Title taken from Ellie Goulding's "Figure 8". If y'all want to cry about SKAM together I'll be chilling over here on [my tumblr](http://grapplemydrapple.tumblr.com/).


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